Photo Tips – ISO/Light Sensitivity

With today being National Camera Day—let’s finish up with series of Getting To Know Your Camera.

ISO – International Standard of Organization or before digital it was known as film speed and not “in search of”. Well, we are, in fact “in search of” more light!

Low ISO – less light and less grain or noise. High ISO – more light and more grain or noise.

Low ISO is similar to your camera wearing sunglasses and the higher you turn up the ISO it is like you have taken your sunglasses off. A high ISO makes your camera more sensitive to light. It is always best to keep your ISO as low as you can so as to keep a higher quality photo. Sometimes turning up your ISO can’t be avoided when you require a fast shutter speed.

In this photo I needed a fast shutter speed to to freeze the action and therefore I needed to turn the ISO up to 3200 to let more light in and then I could speed up the shutter release. To refresh you from the last lesson, the shutter speed is a measurement of time and it is the amount of time that the shutter is open. It is always better to have a sharper photo with grain rather than a unusable blurry photo. f5.6, 1/250 sec, ISO 3200

Sometimes you change one of the settings to get the results you want, sometimes two and sometimes all three.

As you can see this photo has been under exposed – f4.5, 1/250 sec, ISO 100 and with a few setting changes you have a correctly exposed photo.

So in this photo I wanted to capture the girls in mid air, have enough light and not be blurry. To achieve this I kept the f-stop at 4.5, changed the shutter speed to 1/500 and pushed the ISO up to 5000. It is very rewarding when a dark photo comes to life!

As sunlight is running out ISO is our friend at dusk. f5, 1/125, ISO 400

To brighten this photo I kept the f-stop and the shutter speed the same, but I increased the ISO to 800.

Below are a series of photos to show how light and ISO are directly related.

BRIGHT SUNLIGHT

ISO 200

ISO 400

SHADED SUNLIGHT

ISO 400

ISO 800

DIRECT SUNLIGHT INDOORS

ISO 800

ISO 1600

DARKER ROOM INDOORS

ISO 3200

ISO 6400

As you can see, the higher the ISO the photo started to become grainy, but a lower ISO creates a dark photo. The last photo is not as bright as I would like it to be, but I didn’t adjust any other settings in the camera such as the shutter speed or f-stop to demonstrate how just changing the ISO can change the exposure.

With a quick exposure adjustment in an editing program you can have a properly exposed photo.

Newer cameras have the capability of using a higher ISO as the quality has been highly improved in digital cameras. If you have an older camera you may not have access to a high ISO.

Shutter speed and f-stop are the creative decisions you will make and ISO is there to help out. That is the beauty of manual photography. YOU now control the light in your camera!

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9 thoughts on “Photo Tips – ISO/Light Sensitivity”

Thank you for your series on Photography Tips. I have always used the camera setting to fit the situation, but recently have started to go Manual. I have saved your posts for future reference and will continue to try to improve my photo skills using an older Canon DLS camera. Sometimes editing a photo is the only way to improve the quality of the lighting! Once again CM has stepped up to share ideas with their customers.

Thanks so much for all your photography articles! They were very helpful. I am amazed at the differences in the pictures when you change the settings. I hope that I can improve my photos with practice using your tips.